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With opponents on CapitolHill unable to keep President Obama from signing the controversial National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers in Washington State are proposing a bill that would block its dangerous provisions from themselves.

Five Republican lawmakers in the state of Washington have proposed a bill that would keep the provisions that permit the president from indefinitely detaining American citizens from applying to state residents. Despite widespread opposition, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA, into law on December 31, 2011. In authorizing the bill, President Obama added a signing statement insisting that he would not abide by the provisions that permit the unconstitutional actions guaranteed under the law. Even with this addendum, however, critics fear that this president — and any future ones — will use the bill to break down the civil liberties of Americans.

Reps. Jason Overstreet, Matt Shea, Vincent Buys, Cary Condotta and David Taylor, all Republicans, have introduced HB 2759, or the Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act. With the bill, the lawmakers aim to tackle the NDAA provisions that make American citizens on par with al-Qaeda terrorists in terms of making anyone in the US eligible for stay at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

The bill calls for, among other items, “To condemn in no uncertain terms,” the sections of the NDAA that authorize the president to used the armed forces to indefinitely detain Americans without charge, subject them to military tribunals and transfer citizens to a foreign country or foreign entity.

“Winning the war against terror cannot come at the great expense of eviscerating the unalienable rights recognized by and protected in the United States Constitution,” add the lawmakers.

Outside of Washington, others have agreed since before the law went into effect. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero responded to the news of the bill’s authorization last month by saying, “President Obama’s action … is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

In Congress, Texas Representative Ron Paul has actually proposed a bill that will repeal those dangerous provisions from coast-to-coast. Following Monday’s GOP primary in the state of Florida, Congressman Paul used an address to supporters to voice his opposition to the NDAA.

“The purpose of all governments should be the protection of individual liberty for each and every one of us!” said Paul. “We need to reverse the trend of the attack on our civil liberties, we need to repeal the Patriot Act . . . We need to reverse the trend of the attack on our civil liberties, we need to repeal the Patriot Act . . . We need to repeal the provision that says the president can use the military to arrest any American citizen and deny them a trial!”

He brought that argument to the Washington DC last month, asking, “Is this really the kind of United States we want to create in the name of fighting terrorism?”

“I recognize how critical it is that we identify and apprehend those who are suspected of plotting attacks against Americans. But why do we have so little faith in our justice system?” asked the congressman. He proposed a bill that would repeal the detention provisions, although Congress has yet to act on it.

In the other Washington, however, lawmakers may soon vote on a localized bill that would keep The Evergreen State safe from the NDAA. If passed, the Washington State Preservation of Liberty Act will bar the U.S. military from conducting an investigation or detainment of a citizen within the state of Washington.

Last month, the US Supreme Court already evoked the NDAA by using its detention provisions to justify the continued imprisonment of an alleged terrorist, Musa’ab al-Madhwani.

Moammar Gadhafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bankaccounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world, about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected, according to senior Libyan officials.

The new estimates of the deposed dictator’s hidden cash, gold reserves and investments are “staggering,” one person who has studied detailed records of an asset search said Friday. “No one truly appreciated the scope of it.”

Obama administration officials were stunned last spring when they found $37 billion in Libyan regime accounts and investments in the United States, and they quickly froze the assets before Gadhafi or his aides could move them.

Governments in France, Italy, England and Germany seized control of an additional $30 billion or so. Investigators estimated Gadhafi had stashed perhaps $30 billion elsewhere, for a total of about $100 billion.

But subsequent investigations by U.S., European and Libyan authorities determined Gadhafi secretly sent tens of billions more abroad and made sometimes-lucrative investments in nearly every major country, including much of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, officials said Wednesday.

According to the English-language paper based in Tehran, the announcement came from a top Iranian naval officer on Tuesday.

“As the global arrogance (forces of imperialism) have a (military) presence near our sea borders, we also plan to have a strong presence near the U.S. sea borders with the help of the soldiers who are loyal to the vali-e faqih (supreme jurisprudent),” said Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, as quoted and paraphrased by the Tehran Times.

“We’ve been pushing freedom of the seas for years and the Iranian navy can go wherever it wants,” said Pentagon Spokesman Capt. John Kirby.

The Iranians gave no indication of when or what kind of vessels they might deploy, but the announced plan comes just months after Iran sent warships through the Suez following the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It was the first time Iran had moved ships into the Mediterranean and the move put Israel on high alert.

The naval unit plans to establish direct contact with the U.S. when it hits the Gulf of Mexico, a commander in the Iranian navy said. Officials in the Pentagon strongly denied any planned port visits by the Iranians.

One senior official echoed Capt. Kirby in saying that Iran has the pleasure of moving wherever it desires in international waters. But with known intent to approach U.S. maritime borders, he added, “they might have some company.”

The 12-member super committee created to slash the federal deficit is powered by the threat that if it doesn’t come up with $1.2 trillion in savings, automatic, across-the-board cuts will be instituted to reach that same goal, with half of those cuts hitting the Pentagon.

Don’t believe it.

The supposed across-the-board cuts aren’t slated to go into effect until January 1, 2013. Put more simply: They might not ever go into effect.

The automatic cuts — known as sequestration — are often discussed in Washington as if they’re certain, an inevitability that Congress won’t be able to prevent. But on the same day those cuts would go into effect, the Bush tax rates, which President Obama extended for two years, are set to expire, leading to an “automatic” tax hike that is treated in Washington as anything but inevitable. (That the two coming policy changes are approached so differently — cuts are expected; expiring tax breaks for the wealthy are brushed aside — is a window into Washington’s priorities.)

A host of other tax cuts and credits will expire on the same day, including the alternative minimum tax, ethanol tax credits, renewable energy credits and others important to businesses, the wealthy and the middle class.

A lame duck Congress would have two months after the 2012 election to stave off the expiration of both that tax policy and the super committee’s “automatic” cuts.

The most likely scenario: The super committee locks up along partisan lines and, after the 2012 election, bipartisan negotiators deal with the tax cuts and the super committee’s sequestration cuts, along with a basket of other expiring provisions, in one set of negotiations. Democrats will be pressured by the coming sequestration, while Republicans will be motivated by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. And all of their negotiations will take place in a political and economic climate impossible to predict today.

“All of this at some point comes together,” said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) of the Bush tax cuts and the sequestration. “One thing about this place, the paces just keep repeating themselves.”

While many have portrayed the super committee as having some sort of automatic axe, other observers haven’t bought the idea. Stan Collender, a Democratic budget expert and consultant to Wall Street and Washington lobbyists, saw through it quickly, writing a report for Qorvis Communications downplaying the likelihood of the automatic cuts.

“There is a high probability that the super committee won’t be able to agree on a deficit reduction deal and that the across-the-board spending cuts that are supposed to be triggered if that happens will NOT go into effect as scheduled in 2013,” he wrote. “Federal budget agreements have seldom, if ever, gone the distance. Instead, they have always been changed, waived, ignored or abandoned.”